It is time, however, to leave the affairs of popular actors of the ancient world, since it is less the details of their personal history we need to consider than their importance as the virtual inventors of the second element of Ballet, the art of the mime, or, to use for a moment the more comprehensive word--pantomime. Thus we can see that it is largely due to the perfecting by the Italians of that art which seems to have been even more natural to them than to the Greeks--miming, that we have the Ballet of to-day. From the dawn of the Christian era, comedy gave place to a perfect craze, first for the mime, and then for its offspring, pure pantomime. But, finally, the mimetic art as a standing entertainment of the Roman public, came to suffer neglect in favour of circuses; then, together with the circuses, it was opposed by the Churches. There were spasmodic revivals in the fourth and fifth centuries, but from the fifth century mime and pantomime practically ceased to exist in Constantinople, to which the seat of the Roman Empire had by that time been removed; and the arts both of the dancer and the mime fell upon a period of obscurity, though they went into retirement with all the reluctance of a modern “star.” CHAPTER V CHURCH THUNDER AND CHURCH COMPLAISANCE It is a truism of history that opposition towards the amusements of a people only increases the desire for them, and that the undue pressure of a law, or of a too rigid majority, only stimulates the invention of evasions. In dramatic history there is ample proof of this. In England during the seventeenth century the force of Puritan opinion and of law did not crush the Drama, but led to unseemly licence. When, in the early eighteenth century, Paris was enlivened by the spectacle of the majestic Royal Opera, endeavouring by legal thunder to suppress the lively vaudeville performances of the too popular Paris Fairs, and even going to the length of obtaining decrees forbidding the Fair theatres to perform musical plays in which words were sung, were the managers of the little theatres downhearted? No! they merely evaded the law and made a mockery of pompous interference by having the music of their songs played, while the meaning was acted in dumb-show, and--the actual words, printed very large, were displayed on a screen let down to the stage from above! Their audiences, catching the spirit of the thing, enjoyed the wit of the evasion and supported the performances all the more. There are many people who can only relish that which they have been told is wrong. Much the same spirit was abroad about sixteen hundred years ago, when the growing power of the Christian Church began to be a calculable factor in “practical politics,” and the embarrassment of successive Roman emperors in trying to rule an unwieldy and decaying Empire was increased by the moral warfare between the more rigid sects of the new Church and the pleasures of the people.